Hi team,
Welcome to the twenty-fourth installment of Furloughed. Maybe it’s a newsletter about things I’m doing while furloughed, things you can do, or both.
I didn’t know how to introduce this week’s newsletter, and then we had a POWER CUT. So that was exciting. Happily, we had a bag of tea lights in the cupboard.
We lit the candles and my partner wrote a comedy poem entitled ‘Dark’ while we sat in the dim light. And I did a row of knitting (watching it didn’t catch on fire). Suddenly the 2 am rabbit hole I’d gone down earlier in the week, that led to solar-powered backpacks, didn’t seem so stupid. I will order some solar lamps pronto.
I put a mask on and walked past the emptying pub to the main street to see if the lights were out there. But a young woman sneezed on one side of the street and a young man coughed on the other, and it suddenly felt like a zombie apocalypse. Then I realised I was wearing a T-shirt that says ‘smash the patriarchy’ and a large group of lads were walking toward me. So I walked back.
That night I had a dream a virus was turning people's eyes black (with a phase that involved vomiting on the floor). Some were mutating in different, less creepy, ways. All the infected people encouraged others to catch it and join them. I was wearing sunglasses and keeping my head down so I wouldn’t be forced to join either faction. And I met an introverted colleague on a path who was doing the same as me.
So… I’m looking forward to my second vaccine, whenever the vaccine centres (whose staff weren’t consulted by the government about the logistics of reducing the gap between shots from 12 to 8 weeks) can rebook my slot.
Things to watch
Short things
❤️
I was talking to someone about dial-up internet this week and remembered…
Series
Mainstay recommendations are City of Ghosts and Waffles + Mochi. And We Are Lady Parts.
This week I got really into Sleepy Hollow the series on Disney+ (I wonder where the nightmare inspo came from) — it’s very silly and enjoyable. My partner and I have one episode of the brilliant Sweet Tooth left. And exciting news, Netflix’s incredibly trashy Virgin River is back!
Films
Last Saturday, on movie and homemade pizza night, we watched the very Netflixy 1994 horror flick thing. The next one is out now.
Things to read
Lots of praise from lots of people for Gareth Southgate recently. His article, ‘Dear England’ is well worth a read. Humans are messy and there is no class any of us get to graduate from with a certificate for perfect thought and humility. It’s difficult to strike the right balance in this divided country — but I think he does a good non-perfect job.
“This is a special group. Humble, proud and liberated in being their true selves.
Our players are role models. And, beyond the confines of the pitch, we must recognise the impact they can have on society. We must give them the confidence to stand up for their teammates and the things that matter to them as people.
I have never believed that we should just stick to football.
I know my voice carries weight, not because of who I am but because of the position that I hold… I have a responsibility to the wider community to use my voice, and so do the players.
It’s their duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice, while using the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate.” — Gareth Southgate
This week also brought what I would call a ‘second-hand gossip new development’ on a story that made a lot of people wince.
The short story in question is Cat Person. The piece went viral in 2017 at the height of #MeToo. It resonated with me a lot as someone, like many I’m sure, who was in a toxic non-relationship relationship with a man 12 years older than me in my early twenties. I don’t intend to absolve that man of blame, however, the part of the ‘fictional’ story that didn’t resonate with me at the time it went viral; was how the storyteller describes the male character as physically disgusting. I thought perhaps the author, Kristen Roupenian, a queer person, was critiquing ‘heterosexual’ intimacy through caricature. So this week’s revelation was really something. Because the author herself is guilty of not obtaining consent…
“We are all unreliable narrators. Sometimes, to my own disappointment, I find myself inclined to trust Roupenian over myself…
“What’s difficult about having your relationship rewritten and memorialized in the most viral short story of all time is the sensation that millions of people now know that relationship as described by a stranger. Meanwhile, I’m alone with my memories of what really happened—just like any death leaves you burdened with the responsibility of holding onto the parts of a person that only you knew.” — Alexis Nowicki
I didn’t dare look at what the Guardian had to say about the whole thing but I did find an article in Flare (from before this latest revelation) on Roupenian’s imposter syndrome…
‘She started to feel oddly guilty for being a 37-year-old queer author who had just done a credibly compelling job of writing a character in her 20s. She also worried about being thrust into a precarious cultural moment as some kind of authoritative voice for women trying to navigate contemporary dating culture.
“I was very self-conscious at the beginning about talking about my sexuality—about being queer—because I felt like I was being thrust into the spotlight as a spokesperson for bad dates with men.”’ — Flannery Dean
While it is important always to acknowledge the damage harm perpetrated by men does, addressing how internalised patriarchy can lead women to harm each other in numerous ways would make interesting reading...
‘Heteropessimism generally has a heavy focus on men as the root of the problem…
Yet while trying to redeem oneself from whiteness or heterosexuality through performative distancing mechanisms might seem progressive, the reality is usually little more than an abdication of responsibility. If heteropessimism’s purpose is [self-forgiveness], it cannot also be justice [(which requires coalition and solidarity)]
Quite often framed as an anti-capitalist position, heteropessimism could be read as a refusal of the “good life” of [marriage] and property ownership that capitalism once mandated. Yet this good life, which was always withheld from marginalized populations, is now untenable for almost everyone…
A certain strain of heteropessimism assigns 100 percent of the blame for heterosexuality’s malfunction to men, and [so has] become one of the myriad ways young women—especially white women—have learned to disclaim our own cruelty and power
Queer theorists look smugly at heterosexuality over their shoulders as the thing that they have—thank God—left behind. In doing so, they remain outdatedly attached to a moment in which heterosexuality was widely understood to be an idealized form of life.
There’s evidence heterosexual culture is changing. But even if it weren’t, we would have to believe it could, because tens of thousands of women are currently dying of it every year, murdered by their husbands, boyfriends, or exes.
Yes, universal queerness and the abolition of gender may be the horizon toward which we are eventually moving—but what happens in the meantime?’ — Indiana Seresin
Reports
An intergenerational audit for the UK (2020)
Books
It turned out I had accidentally ordered the Quiet journal by Susan Cain instead of the book. But I showed my partner, and after reading the bit where she says it’s okay to cross the road to avoid talking to someone he was sold! So I gave it to him. I took a peek at the beginning of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. It’s great.
Feel good
Four-day week 'an overwhelming success' in Iceland
The micro homes designed to tackle the UK housing crisis
Things to listen to
Podcasts
Mainstay recommendation is this Blindboy podcast with Emma Dabiri. And more Blindboy - How to Solve the Housing Crisis, a podcast about donut economics. And this one on Understanding the fight over trans rights.
Music
15-year-old me on holiday in Italy for a month with my friend would have gone into meltdown too.
Join a union and find your local mutual aid
Millions of people who should have access to furlough do not.
You can join a union to help protect yourself and others. Another thing to join is your local Mutual Aid group. If the database is TMI, Google where you live + mutual aid and yours should pop up.
“Despite mounting evidence women have been disproportionately furloughed or made redundant while absorbing more of the unpaid work associated with the pandemic, we were concerned we weren’t seeing policy changes to reflect that, particularly ahead of the third lockdown,” said Clare Wenham, co-author of Why We need A Gender Advisor on Sage. — UK government ‘failed to consider gender’ in its response to Covid pandemic — Hannah Summers
Sustainable Suppression
Avoid the three Cs - Confined. Crowded. Close-contact settings. Mask up.
Here’s this week’s Independent SAGE briefing. And their vaccinations FAQ if you or people you know have vaccine questions. They have also put out a document about the continuing need for support measures.
A video on how to ventilate a room
After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemic
People to listen to
Things to do
Make a Corsi cube to filter a room/ set up a crowdfund to make them for classrooms
Send me any fun things to do or look at you see so I can include them!